The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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FOREIGN RELATIONS
IOI
from
Tung-ching
(EASTERN CAPITAL)
*.
k'ai.rhr
AO
.
K'ai-chou
First invasion, 993
Second
invasion,
1011-12
Third invasion, 1018-19
300 km
' ioOmili
MAP
5. Liao campaigns against Koryo, 993-1019
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IO2 THE
LIAO
that the Kory6 state should, as in Silla's time, restrict its aims to the control
of the peninsula.
88
Nonetheless, the Khitan conquest of
Po-hai,
followed by the resettlement
of much of the Po-hai population around Liao-yang, had subtly altered the
situation. Not all the former territories were incorporated into the Liao state,
and not all the Po-hai people had accepted Liao rule in 926. Many members
of Po-hai officialdom had taken refuge in Kory6. Po-hai itself had originally
been founded by remnants of the Kogury6 ruling elite and hence looked on
the northern-oriented Kory6 dynasty as distant relatives and potential al-
lies.
89
Moreover, there were three groups of Po-hai people who remained
independent, beyond the Liao's eastern border: the northwestern Po-hai in
the Sungari Valley in modern Heilungkiang, a group of Po-hai living west of
the Yalu in Liao-ning, and, most powerful of all, a group who in 926 had
established the independent state of Ting-an (Korean: Chongan) in the upper
valley of the Mu-tan chiang with its capital city Wu-jo at the site of the
former Po-hai Supreme Capital (modern Tung-ching, Kirin).
9
°
In 975 Ting-an came into conflict with the Liao. A Khitan punitive
expedition was sent against it but failed. In 985—6 the Liao again invaded
the area, and in the 980s there was constant trouble with Ting-an and the
various Jurchen tribes living in the Yalu Valley, with whom the Sung had
tried to establish some sort of anti-Khitan alliance. In 991 the Liao estab-
lished three forts with garrisons and military colonies in the lower Yalu
Valley, to prevent communication by sea between the Jurchen and the Sung.
All these activities threatened Koryo. A Liao plan to invade Kory6 in 947
had been aborted when the Kory6 king, Chongjong (r. 945—9), mobilized a
large defensive army and the Liao had realized what a powerful adversary
Kory6 might be. Until the 980s Khitan—Kory6 relations had been at arm's
length, for the Jurchen tribes and Ting-an had provided a buffer zone be-
tween Koryo's northern frontier and the Liao border, but by 990 it was clear
that Liao wanted to annex this territory. The new activities by the Liao that
revived the urgency of the situation not only revealed the latent enmity
between Liao and Koryo but also linked it with the broader international
situation.
Kory6 had maintained cultural and diplomatic relations with the Sung ever
88 For a clear analysis of the polarization of attitudes at the Koryd coutt, see Michael C. Rogers,
"National consciousness in medieval Korea: The impact of Liao and Chin on Koryd," in
China among
equals: The Middle Kingdom and
its
neighbors,
loth— 14th
centuries,
ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1983), p. 152.
89 On this relationship, see Ki-baik Lee, A
new history
0/Korea,
trans. Edward W. Wagner (Cambridge,
Mass.,
1984), p. 103.
90 On Ting-an, see Wada Sei, "Teian koku ni tsuite,"
Toyo
gakuho,
6 (1915); repr. with revisions in his
Toa shi kenkyu: Manshu hen, Toyo bunko ronso no. 37 (Tokyo, 1955), pp. 161—89; and Hino
Kaisaburo, "Teian koku," in vol. 6 of Ajia
rekishi jiten
(Tokyo, i960), p. 388.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS IO3
since 962,9' as they previously had with each of the Five Dynasties in turn. In
963 King Kwangjong (r. 949—75) had been invested with his title by Sung
T'ai-tsu. By the tenth century the Koreans were thoroughly imbued with Chi-
nese cultural influence at all levels and hated, despised, and feared the Khitan.
The Sung emperors were thus building on potent real sentiments when in 985
they attempted to enlist Kory6 as an ally in defending a common cultural heri-
tage.
Neither party, however, was willing to put its alliance to the test. Ac-
cordingly, during the Sung invasion of
986,
Koryo had refused to attack Liao.
The Khitan, for their part, believed that Kory6 posed
a
serious potential
threat to their eastern border. Tension had been increased by Khitan attacks
on the Jurchen and Ting-an. The Khitan also may well have feared that
Kory6 might encourage the endemic disaffection of the large Po-hai popula-
tion within Liao,
a
disaffection that eventually resulted in
a
major rebellion
in 1029-30.
In 992-3 Hsiao Heng-te,
92
viceroy
of
the Liao Eastern Capital, was or-
dered
to
invade Kory6. He crossed the border with
a
huge army, which he
claimed
to
number 800,000, demanding the cession to Liao
of
the former
Koguryd territories both south and north of the Yalu. The Kory6 court asked
the Sung for assistance. But none was forthcoming: Once again the Sung—
Kory6 "alliance" had proved to be a sham. The Koreans, however, were well
able
to
take care
of
themselves and prepared strong defenses. Their king,
SSngjong (r. 982-97), led
a
powerful army north
to
P'y6ng-yang. Mean-
while, after some fighting the main Liao force advanced as far as the Ch'6ng-
ch'on River. At this point
it
seems that the Liao command decided that the
conquest
of
Korea was impossible, and so negotiations began between the
chief Liao general, Hsiao Heng-te, and the Kory6 commander, S6 Hui. The
Liao at first offered Kory6 the choice between total surrender or annihilation,
and the Kory6 was inclined
to
submit. But S6 Hiii's intrepid persistence
enabled them to reach
a
negotiated settlement under which Kory6 became
a
nominal tributary of the Liao and broke off
its
long-established links with the
Sung. The Korean king was invested with his title
by
the Liao emperor.
Koryo was left free to deal with the Jurchen tribes south of the Yalu Valley,
which they promptly acted upon: S6 Hui led his army into the area in 994—6
and established forts to maintain peace.
93
From
994
onward there were constant exchanges
of
envoys.
In 994
91 See Marugame Kinsoku, "Korai to So to no tsuko mondai,"
Chosen
gakuho,
17 (i960), pp. 1—50;
18
(1961),
pp. 58-80.
92 For his biography, see LS, 88, pp. 1342-3. He is generally referred to in Korean histories by his style,
Sun-ning.
93 Ki-baik Lee, A
new history
of Korea, p. 125, and map, p. 127; Han Woo-keun (Han U-gun), Thehistory
of Korea, trans. Lee Kyung-shik (Honolulu, 1971), pp. 138—9. See also Rogers, "National conscious-
ness in medieval Korea," pp. 154—6, which questions the veracity of the traditional account.
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IO4 THE LIAO
SSngjong offered women musicians to Sheng-tsung, who, with a show of
Confucian virtue, declined them. Batches of Korean students were sent to
learn the Khitan language, and in 996 King S6ngjong sent an envoy request-
ing a marriage alliance. The Liao court permitted him to marry Hsiao Heng-
te's daughter (whose mother was a princess from the royal family). When
S6ngjong died in 997, the Khitan court duly invested his successor Wang
Chong (posthumous title Mokchong; r. 997-1009) as king in 998.
During the following years the Liao were preoccupied with their invasion
of Sung and the subsequent treaty negotiations. During the wars of 999—
1000 and 1004 there was no question of the Kory6—Sung alliance's being
revived: In each case the Kory6 king formally congratulated the Liao court on
its victories over the Sung.
War with the Sung
The Sung and Liao forces had confronted each other along the border since
the 980s, with occasional outbreaks of localized fighting. In 994 the Sung
court had made some tentative moves to establish peaceful relations, but
these had been rejected. Both courts had outstanding territorial claims on the
other. Sung irredentists still looked for the total recovery of the "Sixteen
Prefectures" ceded to the Khitan by Chin in
938.
Khitan revanchists, embold-
ened by their easy victories in 986-7, hankered to reconquer Mo-chou and
Ying-chou, the southernmost of the prefectures that had been ceded to them
by Chin in 938 and that the Chou had wrested from them in 959. This area
they referred to as Kuan-nan, "South of the Barriers."
The late 990s saw a change in the situation. As a result of the war with
Kory6,
the threat of a hostile Sung—Kory6 alliance had been removed. Mean-
while, the Tangut Hsia regime in northwest China was becoming a major
irritant on the Sung border, under their warlike chieftain Li Chi-ch'ien, who
had remained obstinately independent after another faction of the Tangut
leadership had surrendered to the Sung in 982. In 986 Li Chi-ch'ien, having
rebelled against the Sung, submitted to the Khitan and was given various
offices and titles as a vassal ruler. In the spring of
989
he was given as a bride
a member of the imperial clan who had been quickly granted the title of
"princess," and in the next year Li Chi-ch'ien was formally installed by the
Khitan court as the king of Hsia.
There was thus at least a formal alliance between the Khitan and Hsia, but
it was, however, rather precarious. In 992, hearing that the Hsia were
negotiating in secret with the Sung, the Khitan sent a punitive expedition
led by Han Te-jang's brother Han Te-wei to attack Hsia territory along the
upper course of the Huang-ho River. There were further troubles with other
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FOREIGN RELATIONS IO5
Tangut tribes living in western territories of the Liao in 997 and in 1001.
But Li Chi-ch'ien remained a Khitan vassal, albeit far from a docile one, and
his forces could threaten the Sung's lengthy northwestern frontier.
With the accession of Chen-tsung in 997, the Sung court was no longer led
by a soldier-emperor, but by perhaps the most passive of all the Northern
Sung monarchs. There also were changes in the leadership at the Liao court.
In 998 Yeh-lii Hsiu-ko, the long-serving Khitan commander in
chief,
died.
In late summer of the next year, the emperor promulgated an edict announc-
ing mobilization for a campaign against the Sung. Just as this campaign was
being prepared, the northern commissioner for military affairs, Yeh-lu Hsieh-
chen, also died, leaving Han Te-jang the most powerful man in the Khitan
kingdom after the emperor and the empress dowager. The Liao armies at-
tacked first toward the crucial strategic center of Ting-chou, attacking the
county town of Sui-ch'eng. The first Liao assault was repulsed, but in mid-
winter the Liao won a second battle in the same area. Meanwhile, another
Khitan force advanced farther to the east toward Ying-chou. After inflicting a
heavy defeat on a Sung army near the city, this force advanced south as far as
Lo-shou (modern Hsien-hsien, Hopei). The Liao forces, however, had failed
to take the prefectural cities of either Ting-chou or Ying-chou, and after new
year iooo, the campaign was called off and the armies disbanded.
In the winter of IOOI the Liao armies, this time under the emperor's own
command, again invaded Sung northeast of Ting-chou and defeated their
forces at Sui-ch'eng. This time the Sung counterattacked farther east, and
after this attack was beaten back, hostilities again came to an end. The
summer of 1002 saw renewed border clashes, and in 1003 the Liao army
under Hsiao T'a-lin renewed its attack on Ting-chou, this time penetrating
as far as Wang-tu, where they captured in battle an important Sung official
named Wang Chi-chung who commanded the forces in the Ting-chou re-
gion. None of these seasonal campaigns seems to have resulted in any perma-
nent occupation of Sung territory (see Map 6).
In 1004 the Liao court decided on a full-scale invasion. In the eighth
month, news reached the Sung court that Khitan light cavalry had raided the
area between Mo-chou and Ch'i-chou but had withdrawn, apparently unwill-
ing to engage Sung forces in battle.
94
The prefect of Hsiung-chou, sensing
serious trouble, asked that the authorities in the coastal prefectures open the
floodgates along the canal and on the seacoast, flooding a wide area to
prevent any Khitan advance in that area.
95
A few days later the Sung court
ordered the deployment of crack troops to the Ting-chou area and the general
94 HCP. 57, p. 1251.
95 HCP. 57, p. 1252.
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io6
THE LIAO
MAP
6. The Liao invasion of
Sung,
1004
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FOREIGN RELATIONS IO7
conscription
of
young men throughout Ho-pei and Ho-tung,
to
be armed
and trained
for
local defense.
The invasion began
in
late autumn, the Liao armies being under
the
command of the emperor and empress dowager. A powerful army in the west
first attacked along the same route as
in
previous years, taking Sui-ch'eng
and Wang-tu.*
6
But again, instead
of
taking Ting-chou itself they turned
south
to
take the prefecture
of
Ch'i-chou,
in
the tenth month, and then
swept rapidly southward down
the
western flank
of
Hopei. Meanwhile,
another part of the army had split off and attacked Ying-chou, the crucial
stronghold in the northern plain and the center of the Kuan-nan district that
the Khitan hoped
to
reconquer. The city was besieged for more than two
weeks, a siege bitterly contested by both armies, but the Khitan finally failed
to take the city, and so their army withdrew and joined the advance
to
the
south. Early
in
the eleventh month they routed
a
Sung army in Ming-chou
(northeast of modern Han-tan) and advanced to Shan-yuan (sometimes read
T'an-yuan), just north of the Yellow River, where the Sung had concentrated
their main forces, under Chen-tsung
himself,
to
oppose them. They were
little more than a hundred kilometers from the Sung capital, K'ai-feng.
The scene was set for a climactic battle. In a preliminary sortie the Khitan
general Hsiao T'a-lin,
97
who had led the march through Ho-pei, was killed
by a sniper using a long-range crossbow, and the Khitan attack was repulsed.
Khitan forces meanwhile made
a
quick but destructive raid on the nearby
military prefecture of T'ung-li.
Negotiations
to
reach
a
peace settlement had been going
on for
some
time.
98
The Sung were fearful of the military outcome and had been anxious
for
a
peaceful settlement even before the 1004 invasion began. The Khitan
too,
even though they had resorted
to
armed force, were still willing
to
negotiate. On the Khitan side the key personality was Wang Chi-chung, the
Sung official taken by the Khitan
in
1003."
Having won the confidence of
the empress dowager, he had been appointed a finance commissioner and had
married
a
woman descended from K'ang Mo-chi, one of A-pao-chi's earliest
Chinese advisers. Wang Chi-chung had not only been
an
important Sung
commander;
he
had also been
a
personal confidant
of
Chen-tsung, having
served in his princely household before his accession, and on his palace
staff.
96 HCP, 57, pp. 1265-6.
97 Hsiao T'a-lin, whose name appears in Sung sources as Hsiao Ta-lan, was an experienced general who
had fought in earlier campaigns against the Sung,
in
Korea, and with the empress dowager's sister
Hu-lien on the Mongolian frontier. See LS, 85, pp. 1313-14.
98 There are differing versions of these events. Liao inscriptions (see Wittfogel and Feng, p. 355, n. 45,
and LS, 14, p. 160) state that the Sung initiated negotiations. Sung sources state that the Liao were
responsible. See T'o-t'o et al. eds., Sung shih (Peking, 1977),
7,
p. 125 (hereafter cited as SS); CTKC,
7, p. 4a; HCP, 57, pp. 1268-9, gives a very circumstantial account, which I follow.
99 For their biographies see LS, 81, pp. 1284—5; SS, 279, pp. 9471-2.
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IO8 THE LIAO
His counterpart on the Sung side was Pi Shih-an (938—1005), who had
served with him in the future Chen-tsung's household and was now coun-
cillor. He had encouraged Chen-tsung to go himself to the front and recom-
mended K'ou Chun (961
— 1023)
to watch for possible peace initiatives.
With the Liao empress dowager's approval, Wang Chi-chung submitted a
memorial to the Sung emperor through the Sung prefect of Mo-chou, stating
that the Liao court wished to restore friendly relations.
100
This memorial had
been sent after the Liao forces had occupied the territories that they claimed
in Kuan-nan. The Sung emperor
was
surprised and at first suspected that this
was a trick, but he was
finally
persuaded to begin negotiations. The prelimi-
naries were, however, delayed for weeks by the obstreperous conduct of Wang
Ch'in-jo (962—1025), who delayed the Sung envoy. This delay, however,
worked in favor of peace: By the time the Sung envoy, Ts'ao Li-yung (d.
1029),
reached the Liao headquarters, both sides were ready to negotiate.
The Sung had halted the Khitan army's advance and stood opposing it in
overwhelming force in a well-fortified position. The Liao had achieved their
primary objective, the occupation of the Kuan-nan prefectures, and had
penetrated deep into Sung territory.
The Liao hope that the Sung would cede these territories in exchange for
peace did not, however, materialize. Ts'ao Li-yung stubbornly rejected all Liao
territorial claims and offered instead an annual payment of silk and silver,
warning that the only alternative to this offer was continued warfare. That the
Liao gave in and accepted the terms offered by the Sung was probably due to a
realization on both sides that they had reached a military stalemate. The
Khitan realized that their long-term position was far from strong, although
they were within striking distance of the Sung capital. Their army
was
in much
the same situation that T'ai-tsung had been in when he occupied K'ai-feng in
947.
They were boxed into
a
narrow strip of territory surrounded both on the
east and west by intact Sung forces, and even within their occupied area,
several strategic prefectures and fortresses that had simply been bypassed by
the Liao cavalry still held out. Notable among these strong points were Ting-
chou and Ying-chou. Indeed, the Liao army faced the real danger of being cut
off from its home base and trapped in enemy territory.
The treaty of Shan-yuan, 1004
After only a few days of negotiation a treaty was concluded, and the two
courts exchanged oath-letters stating the terms of
peace.
They agreed to the
following:
100
HCP,
57, p. 1268;
SS,
7, p. 125.
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FOREIGN RELATIONS 109
1.
Sung would
pay the
Liao annually 200,000 lengths
of
silk
and
100,000 ounces of silver as
a
"contribution to military expenses."
2.
The border would be carefully demarcated.
3.
Both sides would take strict measures against unauthorized infringe-
ments
of
the border,
and
neither side would disturb the cultivated
lands of the other.
4.
Neither side would give refuge to fugitive criminals.
5.
Existing border fortifications might be repaired, but no new fortifica-
tions or canals might be built along the border.
6. Both sides would observe the treaty, which was sworn with
a
solemn
oath invoking religious sanctions in case of infringement; they would
cultivate friendly relations; and they would respect each other's territo-
rial integrity.
Other agreements provided for the repatriation of prisoners and established the
norms for diplomatic and commercial intercourse between the two empires.
The terminology used
in
this treaty had deep symbolic significance.
The
Sung insisted that the annual payments to the Liao be called
a
"contribution
to military expenses,"
to
avoid their being given
the
humiliating title
of
"tribute." Likewise, the payment was to be delivered by a minor Sung official
at
the
border prefecture
of
Hsiung-chou,
to
demonstrate that the court
at
K'ai-feng considered
it
only a
financial
transaction, not a political act imply-
ing submission.
The
Sung court addressed
its
northern neighbor
as the
"Great Khitan state" (Ta Ch'i-tan kuo) or the Great Liao State (Ta Liao kuo),
and
the
Khitan referred
to it as the
"Southern Sung." The two dynasties
spoke of
each
other as the "Southern Court" and the "Northern Court." Their
monarchs entered into
a
fictitious kinship relationship
as
"brothers."
The
Sung emperor was to address the Liao empress dowager as his aunt, the Liao
emperor as "imperial younger brother," and the Liao emperor referred to his
Sung counterpart as "elder brother."
101
This relationship involved them in
a
ceaseless round
of
ritual exchanges,
in
which
the
Khitan and Sung envoys
were treated
at
the other's court quite differently from those of other states.
Each state observed the taboos on the personal names of deceased emperors of
the other state. Embassies were exchanged
on
such ritual occasions
as the
New Year celebrations, imperial birthdays, the deaths of emperors
or
their
empresses, and the enthronement of new monarchs.
101 The kinship terms used by the two monarchs in addressing one another and the dowager empresses of
the other court were determined by their actual age and generation and changed with each reign.
See
the table in Taojing-shen,
Two sons
of
heaven:
Studies
in Sung-Liao
relations
(Tucson, 1988),
p.
107.
In
practice
it
turned out that the Sung emperor was usually older than his Liao counterpart and thus was
addressed
as
"elder brother,"
but
this was
the
result
of
chance,
not of
design.
In
other reigns
the
relationship was that
of
uncle and nephew, and from 1076 until 1101 the Sung emperor Che-tsung
addressed the long-lived Liao ruler, Tao-tsung, as his "junior grandfather."
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IIO THE
LIAO
The treaty of Shan-yuan was a great success of political realism over
ideological pretensions. It paved the way for a century of stability and
peaceful coexistence, confirmed and guaranteed by an uninterrupted flow of
missions between the two courts. There were minor infringements, usually
settled by the local authorities, and two more serious crises in 1042 and in
1074—6.
But the settlement held. The border between the two states from
the coast to the bend of the Huang-ho River was clearly demarcated and
zealously guarded by both sides, constituting a genuine international frontier
in the modern sense, something unprecedented in China's history. All in all,
the treaty was remarkably successful and contributed greatly to the long-
term stability and the economic and cultural progress enjoyed by both states
during the eleventh century.
Io2
The results of the treaty have commonly been misrepresented; in particu-
lar, the annual subsidies paid by Sung to the Khitan have been described as
having placed a heavy burden on the Sung state. Such was certainly not the
case.
The annual quota of silk presented to the Khitan was equivalent to
the production of only a single southern prefecture such as Yiieh-chou. And
the payments must be viewed in the context of
Liao—Sung
trade as a whole.
Trade had continued uninterrupted after the war of 979, with only brief
breaks during actual hostilities, and resumed on an even broader scale after
the treaty was concluded. In this trade the Sung enjoyed a massive surplus,
and it has been calculated that about 60 percent of the annual silver subsidy
was eventually returned to Sung as payment for various Chinese products,
especially silk, for which there was an insatiable demand in the north.
Whereas the subsidies were not a major outlay for the immensely wealthy
Sung empire, they were far more important to the Khitan, whose revenues
were comparatively meager. They used the silk for their own major internal
expenses, for instance, in building the new Central Capital immediately after
the treaty, and also traded much of it to their neighbors, including the
Uighurs, Tanguts, Koreans, and the tribal peoples of Mongolia.
The arrangement was thus a good bargain for both parties. The Sung
ensured lasting peace at a modest price. The Khitan acquired a steady source
of additional revenue and were able to reduce their southern border defenses
to some degree and to concentrate on internal developments.
102 On the Shan-yuan treaty, see Chiang Fu-tsung,
Sung shib hsin
t'an
(Taipei, 1966), pp. 142 ff.; Wang
Min-hsin, "Shan-yuan ti meng te chien t'ao," Shih
huoyiieh
t'an, n.s., 5 (1975), pp. 97-107. The
fullest study of the treaty in a Western language is by Christian Schwarz-Schilling,
Der Friede von
Shan-yuan (1005 n.
Cbr.):
Ein Beilrag zur
Geschichte der chimsischen
Diplomatic, Asiatische Forschungen
no.
i (Wiesbaden, 1959). See also the lengthy review of this work by A. F. P. Hulsewe in
T'oung
Poo,
47 0957). PP- 445—74, which provides many important corrections.
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